Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain.

This Is Becoming Far Too Common

Far too heavy to get glib over. This keeps happening and my first instinct is to look at it as a sign of the times. That’s a little convenient though, isn’t it? This man was clearly not well; but what about his son? The kid was brainwashed from day one. Dad was mentally ill, but what about the power of a parental figure to shape a kid’s mindset? What happens if a perfectly normal and healthy (both mentally & physically) kid believes the ravings of a lunatic? Is he a victim here?

It’s all so damn ugly.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — It was here, in this blue-collar town of frame houses and good-natured biker bars, that Jerry Ralph Kane Jr. began his fight against what he regarded as the illegitimate corporations he believed had usurped the government.

That fight ended in spectacular fashion Thursday in West Memphis, Ark., just across the Mississippi River from Memphis, leaving Mr. Kane, his 16-year-old son, Joseph, and two local police officers dead.

Mr. Kane and Joseph shot the officers who stopped their white van on Interstate 40, then died in a firefight with other law enforcement officials in a Wal-Mart parking lot, wounding a sheriff and his deputy, the authorities said. A newspaper photograph showed Joseph, dead on a traffic island, the bullet-riddled van behind him.

It was only the culmination — the inevitable culmination, some who knew Mr. Kane said — of a struggle that began here in Springfield.